On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 at 9:16pm, Alan Ward wrote
I have been reading the ongoing discussion on network usage with some interest, mainly because in all (admittedly very small, 4 to 8 node) clusters we have set up so far, we have always gone with doubling the network. Nowadays we mostly run a 100 MBit/s "el cheapo" FastEthernet for control, NFS and monitoring, while the faster Gigabit is exclusively for MPI. Applications are CFD, with various levels of granularity.
In theory, it's a great idea. In practice, wiring up an entire 2nd network gets to be a major PITA (as well as being uncheap) as your cluster size increases. I've got ~350 nodes here, and a 2nd set of cabling is really, really low on the list of projects I'd like to tackle.
-- Joshua Baker-LePain QB3 Shared Cluster Sysadmin UCSF _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
